The Cars That Ate Paris Details

Peter Weir achieved a career high as the Oscar-nominated director of The Truman Show. His directorial debut, however, could not be more different from films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock and Witness, with which he made his reputation. It's a darkly comic tale of a small Australian town that feeds on passing travellers for their car parts; Terry Camilleri is the newcomer who decides to fight back. Rough edges notwithstanding, it's a sharp and vaguely unsettling affair, and fortunately free of some of the portentous imagery that occasionally mars Weir's later work. Among the well known faces in the cast is John Meillon, familiar as Walter Reilly in the Crocodile Dundee films.

Another small town with a guilty secret, in this case more suitable to a half-hour than a feature, but with rewarding attention to detail.